Sunday, October 31, 2010

I just really have to ask, "Who wrote this dumb prompt anyway? And only gave us 50 words?" OK, this was a challenge.

And this is the best I've got. I know I have a few 'tense' errors in the story but I'm still posting it anyway. So there!

Prompt is in bold. And you can click here to link to other more grammatically correct AND interesting Saturday Centus Shake-ups posts!

Ahem....

You can call me John. OK? Here’s the thing about hanging out in the psych ward…all those paranoid schizophrenic weirdos think they are the real deal. They’re certainly all certifiable. One guy, Abraham Lincoln was a lot shorter than I thought he would be...or remembered. I should know. I distinctly remember him being ten inches taller then me when I shot him.

Since I’ve started writing “Sundays with Steve”, I’ve been thinking about vignettes of my life growing up in North Idaho. I realize the town where I grew up and the life I lived with my family is really a classic, all-American story. Perhaps you will recognize some of your childhood in these writings. And perhaps you will recognize the town you grew up in along with some of the characters you knew. Mrs. Steve has encouraged me to write these attempts of “creative writing” as opposed to the more factual journalistic style I was trained in and practiced in my early career many years ago. So my apologies if I stumble a bit here and there trying to blend the two styles together

COLOR OF A LEMON

Many of you read last week about Mrs Jenny’s technology challenges with automobiles. That reminded me of some of the technology- challenged cars we’ve had over the years, several of which were colored yellow, or more precisely, lemon. You’ve probably enjoyed some of those yourself. A nice car that just wouldn’t/couldn’t stay running right? That just couldn’t be repaired correctly? We have.

I loved cars, from my first in high school, a 1966 Volkswagen “fastback” I bought with the summer farm earnings, to the yellow 1948 Jeepster I drive today (well, plus the Infiniti that Mrs. Jenny told you about). There were a lot of cars in between, some good, some not so good, and one that was just a real piece of junk, right up to the night it burned to the ground.

In my list of automobiles there was a hippie Volkswagen bus that I took with me into the Army during Vietnam war time, there was my Dad’s distinctly uncool work car, a 1962 Chevy Biscayne, but I didn’t care, it had wheels that rolled and if I took the air cleaner off, it sounded cool; there was a hot-shot Caddy coupe in 1982 or so, whose transmission was so bad I traded it after a few months for a Corvette. The Corvette rode like a truck on the long drives I would take across the West in those years, and I got rid of it very soon. My record for cars in those years was not good, and every time I would trade the things it would cost a small fortune.

The next car was a BMW 633 coupe. I figured out how to buy an amazingly advanced car for its day, a car priced at about what I made a year, a car full of technology and power. I loved that car. One summer day on long drive out near the edge of the earth on the plains of northeastern Montana, I decided to see how fast that little car would go. It was one of those long straight roads where you could see forever, maybe 10 miles out. I was coming down a small hill where I had an elevated look out ahead, and I could see that there was nothing out there: No other cars, no trucks, no vehicles of any kind, there were no curves in the road; there was just nothing ahead but straight road. That little car scared me a bit, not the shaking or rattling, not the thoughts of potholes or low flying birds hitting my windshield, or of tires not rated fast enough and approaching blow out speed, or of my children at home waiting for me to return; no, it was that the front end of that little BMW that was trying to fly off the ground and the road when I hit about 175 mph. It was then that I decided that was probably fast enough. Having had gone through pilot training, I understood what lift was all about, and I understood the front end was trying to take to flight at that speed.

But that wasn’t the lemon. The lemon was a 1972 Audi LS 100. It was supposedly an advanced vehicle for its day, one of the first of that German auto maker’s imports into the U.S. I was in my first “real” job since graduating from college and serving my Army stint, and I was ready for a high end German engineering marvel.

Well, that’s what I got all right, an engineering marvel: frequent tune-ups, more frequent parts replacements, and a carburetor that would ice up any time the outside temperature was under about 35F. I hated that car, even though it was fast and comfortable for its day.

It was a long drive in 1976 from San Francisco to Boise, Idaho, some 12 hours or so over the lonely and not heavily traveled highways of the high Nevada deserts.

It was a cold night, 100 miles north of Winnemmca on the two-lane US 95 headed north toward Oregon and then Idaho. The stars were exceedingly bright, and there was very little traffic on the road as the midnight hour approached. I hadn’t seen another car or truck for maybe 10 or 15 minutes when I first smelled the smoke.

I suspected it was the whiff of an electrical short circuit, that acrid and sharp familiar order that you don’t forget. This is could be a bit worrisome, I thought. I smelled it again, the smell becoming stronger, and seemingly coming from the dashboard. The last town was maybe 80 miles back, the next town maybe 60 miles in front of me. There was nothing out there.

There were no indications of problems on the dashboard; all systems appeared to be ok. The car was running well.

The smoke grew a bit thicker. I opened the sliding top in the roof, a real advancement in auto design, to clear the air.

The smoke grew thicker still. I thought I could feel heat from under the dash, but then I told myself, no, it was just my imagination. Then the smoke started to sting my eyes. OK, I thought, I think this is the real deal, and that I have a problem on my hands.

I rolled down the driver’s side window – no, there were no electrical windows in that advanced German road machine. The 70 mph wind roared through the cabin, clearing out the air.

When I saw a flickering glow under the dash, I thought I should pull over and get the hell out of that car. I did just that, pulling over into a highway maintenance yard where piles of sand stood waiting to be applied to the winter roads.

I turned off the engine, and all electrical systems, and got out of that car, fast! The smoke had gotten thick and was turning from grey to black. Even with the electric system powered down, the smoke continued to pour from under the dash.

I opened the car trunk and found a flashlight there. I went back to the cabin, and peered under the dashboard trying to illuminate the burning area. I didn’t need the flashlight to see, there were flames enough to illuminate a mass of electrical wires that were burning, that were sparking, and that had spread the building flames to the under-dashboard materials around them.

Crap, I thought, this thing is going to burn unless I stop it.

My father had always insisted his children carry fire extinguishers in their car trunks. I found mine buried in the trunk, and I pulled it out, a small sized extinguisher that should do the job. I also pulled my luggage out of the trunk at the same time, and carried it a ways from the car, just in case, I thought, this situation gets really bad. I was feeling my panic starting to build, just like the fire was growing.

I asked myself in the rising tension of the moment, do I really want to put that fire out and save this car from destruction? The car was painted a grey color, but underneath that fine German precision engineered veneer, the color was really a bright lemon yellow.

Why would I want to do that, I asked myself, why would I want to save this piece of junk car that had been nothing but a problem since I bought it four years ago. If I let it burn, I can solve a whole bunch of problems, and just be done with it. But then, I thought, no that would be wrong, my insurance company will say that I have an obligation to mitigate the damages to this burning car. Mitigate damages? What? Who was I kidding? Am I really having this moral dilemma in the middle of Nevada at midnight while my car is burning up in front of me?

The flooring caught fire while I was deliberating. The carpet started to burn hotly. I saw that the passenger seat was smoldering and starting to smoke, it would go up next. Then flames burst from the passenger seat, and out the open sliding roof. Smoke rolled out the two open car windows.

About then a large truck pulled up into the turn-out behind me, a CF Freightliners semi pulling two trailers on its daily Winnemucca-to-Boise run. I could see the look on the driver’s face, one of surprise and concern. He was yelling something, but I couldn’t make it out.

The driver jumped from the truck, a large fire extinguisher in hand, and came running toward me and the burning car. The driver, named Bob Larson, was close to 50 years old, and was dressed in coveralls and a winter coat.

It was cold out that night, it was dark, and you could see about a billion stars overhead. There was no lighting along the highway, just the yellow glow of the burning Audi framed in the big truck’s headlights.

At that moment, I made up my mind.

“Wait,” I yelled at Larson the truck driver, “Stop! Can you give me a lift to Boise?”

The interior of the car was fully engulfed by then, the fire was roaring.

“Sure, he yelled back, “but what about your car? It’s burning to the ground.”

“No problem,” I said, “it’s just a campfire that will burn itself out pretty soon. Do you have any marshmallows?”

(c) 2010 Stephen J. MatlockThis publication is the exclusive property of Stephen J. Matlock and is protected under the US Copyright Act of 1976 and all other applicable international, federal, state and local laws. The contents of this post/story may not be reproduced as a whole or in part, by any means whatsoever, without consent of the author, Stephen J. Matlock. All rights reserved.

Saturday, October 30, 2010

STOP! If you didn't read the end SC's from last week, please take a moment to do so. Just work backwards until you find out where you left off. I feel really bad that the people at the end don't get read.

Thanks!

Now on to regular SC biz...In case you've forgotten...

This is a themed writing meme and a different challenge this week.

BUT HERE'S THE SHAKE-UP FOR THIS WEEK!

Just to keep it interesting and keep your brain from growing any of that yucky mold that we sometimes find on leftovers hidden wayyyy at the back of the fridge...

You can use UP to 50 words to tell your story. Yes, I said 50! The prompt does not count for your 50 words AND it must be left intact in the body of your story. No illustrations are permitted. Your story can be fact or fiction, just keep it PG, please!

You have the entire week to link your work to the meme and you can link more than one story if you like.

Please display link button or just a hyper-link back to Saturday Centus. Be careful to link your SC URL to the Linky and not just link to your main blog.

I would suggest that since these are so short, if you can't think of a title just use your blog name as the title in the Linky.

Try to visit each one because there are some amazing writers participating in this meme. Since the links are so short they are also a fun and quick read.

Please e-mail me directly with ???'s or ask your question in a comment and I will do my best to get back to you as soon as possible.

Wednesday, October 27, 2010

Earlier in the month I was all excited because this really cool childrens story contest site selected one of my submissions for the November contest. My entry was based on a previous Alphabe-Thursday post, so I thought it would be fun to share it here.

This children's story site is really neat because they tape a child actually reading your submission. Since the contest is based in the UK, the children read in the sweetest little accents. (OK, if you're from across the pond I know you think you don't have an accent...charming or not...but to me...you do...and it is like listening to music and I love that little lilt when you talk...)

...and not just because my first boyfriend, ever, was an English feller who played the guitar and serenaded me outside my bedroom window and...

...and...

...can you hold on a second here?

...

...

OK. I'm back. I had to go get a glass of cold water...

And dump it over my head...

...and...

...

What the heck was I talking about here?

Oh. Yea. English boyfriend and...

Focus, Jenny, focus.

...

Ahem...

OK.

Where was I?

Yea.

I was telling you about this contest. So the way it was supposed to work was the story that got the most 'views' for the month won some money. I was planning to browbeat you all into listening to my little story every day so I could totally win...

Except...

I got an e-mail from the contest people who said they had run out of money.

WHAT????

How can this be?

But they said they would still record my story and put it up in November (don't worry, I'll remind you about a bazillion times what day it is so you can go oooh and awwwww over it later)...because even though I can't win money I can jump up and down in excitement when I get to hear my little recorded story.

So...alas...although I may have momentary fame which probably doesn't count at all...

I will not, sadly, have fortune either.

But it's all good.

If I would have gotten fame AND fortune then I would get all big headed and conceited and be unable to blog anymore because my nose would be up in the air and I wouldn't be able to see my keyboard.

So all in all the whole thing ended well.

And...

You will be happy to know that my little link to Alphabe-Thursday's is now ending as well.

If you'd like to read less rambly links to Alphabe-Thursday's Letter F, just click here, please!

Before you link, though, please STOP and read this! I kinda/sorta checked blog visits and I think everyone did better this week. Please continue to do so...my blood pressure just can't take another ranting episode like that...sigh...

Please link directly to your Alphabe-Thursday URL (if you don't know how to do this let me know!) and please continue to visit the five links before and after your link and leave a comment. Minimum of 10 links visited please. You can visit more if you like, of course.

I also want to let you know that each week I visit every blog. If it appears I haven't visited your blog by Wednesday morning, please let me know, because it is important to me to make sure you know I've visited you! This will avoid you trying to skip out on doing your assignment as well.

If you have any difficulties with your link, please make sure to include the number of the link when you e-mail me. It is really difficult for me to find you easily otherwise.

If you have any questions about Alphabe-Thursday or problems doing your link just post it in a comment or send me an e-mail. I'll do my best to help you as quickly as I can.

The McLinkey will be live from 1:00 pm MST time Wednesday afternoon in an effort to assist our lovely "friends across the pond" and continue through 10:00 am MST time Friday morning!

And remember.... link back to this post, you need to be registered as a follower of my blog, PG posts only, and try to visit the 5 students before and after your post at minimum. The links will stay live after the final post deadline has passed so you can even wait and visit over the weekend or whenever you have more time.

Well, you know...the technology can't ummm.... OK, it means that... Oh, geez, I'm just going to illustrate what I mean with a little story.

So...

Mr. Steve drives a fairly new Infiniti. I drive an 11 year old Maxima.

We'll talk about the unfairness of this another day but...

For a few months now I haven't had my Maxima. It's been on 'loan' to someone needing transportation so I've been driving the nifty Infiniti.

Wow. It is a cool car: back-up cameras, Sirius radio, lane change alarms, those cool keys that you just push the button for, the ability to accelerate from zero to 100 in like four seconds (or so I've heard!), etc, etc, etc!

I've been stylin' the ride and riding in style...

BUT...

Sadly.

I got my car back.

I thought briefly about abandoning it at a mall somewhere so I could continue to use the cool car...

...but that would be wrong...

...and I figured lowering my stress level hauling sticky fingered grandkids around who have the occasional propensity to lick the windows (please don't tell Mr. Jenny about that part) would probably be a good thing.

So...

...on Monday, I drove my car for the first in what feels like forever.

Mr. Jenny started my car and opened the garage door as he often does when I leave to pick up our youngest Granddaughter. On pre-school babysitting days I meet our daughter-in-law at the elementary school the older Grands attend and then take the littlest one to preschool. Since I was a bit early I decided to pick up some of those little round Halloween Dunkin' Donuts for the oldest two Granddaughters lunchboxes.

Huh?

Of course, that's the only reason I would stop at Dunkin' Donuts. Please. You have such a suspicious mind.

BUT...

When I pulled into Dunkin' Donuts parking lot, I went to push the little button to turn the car off and there was no little button. I'm not kidding! I looked all around on the dashboard and couldn't find the button. I got out of the car and kind of laid down on the seat and looked for the button. No button.

I was starting to panic and verging on having a total melt-down, when a kindly man walked over and said "Miss? Do you need some help?" to which I replied, "I don't know how to turn my car off..." ... in response to which he leaned into the car, reached around the steering wheel column, turned the key, took it out and handed it to me with the weirdest look on his face.

Huh?

A key?

A KEY????!!!!!!

A FREAKIN' KEY IS HOW YOU TURN THE FREAKIN' CAR OFF?!?!?!?!

He walked away, shaking his head.

I slunk into Dunkin' Donuts feeling like an idiot.

...

...

So I got six of those little round donuts in two little bags, and a glazed and a halloween sprinkle donut.

Huh?

Geez.

You are soooo suspicious. Three little round donuts for each of the older two grands, the halloween sprinkle donut for the littlest grand and the glazed for our daughter-in-law.

And a coffee for me.

OK?

OK?????

Huh?

No I don't have the receipt to prove it to you.

Geez.

After I gathered my coffee and the little bags of donuts, I went to back out to my car with keys.

And put all the stuff on the front seat.

And went to back out of the parking place!

Accccckkkk!!!!

Arrrrgggggghhhh!!!!

Eeeekkkkkkkkkkkkkkkk!!!!!

Where were the back-up cameras?!?

Who hid the back-up screen from me?!?!?

I totally had to actually turn my head AND look in the rearview and side mirrors.

People can get hurt like that, right?

Seriously. My neck muscles are still sore from the over-exertion they endured backing out of that parking spot.

So now do you see what I mean?

You have to be smarter than the technology.

Or the lack of technology.

Or something.

And, yes, this is the most meaningful post I could summon from my boring and sheltered life.

Tuesday, October 26, 2010

If you missed where this story started just click here to read it or simply click on the Story-Time Tuesday link at the top of my blog to take you to previous chapters.

Writing Fiction - Chapter 8

You know how when you’re ready to go swimming, sometimes the person already in the pool says, “C’mon in the water’s fine,” and you jump in only to splutter and curse the freezing temperature? I felt like that. And you know what? The water was just as freezing as I’d feared it would be and it was even deeper than I’d anticipated.

I psyched myself up to start working on my blog layout, but when I typed the blog name in, I encountered those two, little, innocent spaces in which to enter my e-mail address and password. At first glance, those two little rectangles had seemed pretty benign, but after several minutes I remember almost throwing my laptop across the room in frustration. When I’d decided to start blogging, I’d forgotten to write down my password. Seriously. Who does this kind of stuff? I remember feeling intense relief when I saw that the blog people must run into the forgotten password situation once in awhile, because there was a little button telling you to click on it for assistance. The only problem with the whole assistance concept, is that you have to remember your e-mail address, too. And, of course, being uber-organized I’d decided at the time to set up a new e-mail address, too, which I now couldn’t remember either. Trying every possible combination I could think of, I fought those two watchdog rectangles heroically with absolutely zero success.

Ready to pound myself in the head and then give up on the whole project, I had just closed my eyes in frustration, when I thought of my husband, ‘Mr. Organized’. I felt certain he’d probably written down all his passwords and put them into a special little book or something. Thinking of him in irritation, made me recall that I had written down my new password and e-mail address. I just couldn’t remember where I’d put them.

Is that a consequence of grief, do you think? I could’ve sworn, before my husband used his ‘heavenly access code’, my memory had been as sharp as one of those amazing knives they advertise on TV that can cut an aluminum can in half and then slice a tomato into wafer thin slices. OK. Maybe my mind hadn’t been quite that sharp, but it’s my story so I’m going with the illusion.

I went to the kitchen and rummaged through the junk drawer, looked through all the magnets on the fridge for a sticky note, and even looked on my calendar, but the e-mail address and password continued to elude me. Taking that as a sign that the whole blog idea was stupid, I closed up my laptop ready to surrender to my lack of memory and there, written on the top of it in silver sharpie, was my password and my e-mail address.

See? Sharp as a made-for-TV knife!

I quickly typed in the magic passwords, and I was in!

My smile of triumph quickly faded, though, into a look of disgust once the plain looking blog was displayed. My blog was ugly. There was nothing pretty about it at all. I noticed the word ‘design’ at the top of the page and clicked on it, hoping it would help me make the boring blahness look fancy and neat like the other blogs I’d visited.

But what I saw next made me gasp in abject terror!

All those blogs I’d looked at had deceived me into thinking this would be easy, but now I had this funny screen in front of me and nothing looked simple at all. I took a deep breath and jumped. And the water was most definitely not fine.

Some of the words on the screen made sense, but some I’d never heard before. One word leaped right off the page, though, and that was the word ‘help’! It was the first word I clicked and I must admit to being relieved when I saw a new little rectangle on the top of next page pop up, cheerfully asking, “What can we help you with?”

I quickly discovered that the blog people put those lying little rectangles there just to mess with your head. Did you know, if you type ‘my blog is ugly’ in that rectangle, they don’t tell you anything remotely useful about how to make it less ugly? All kinds of weird things pop-up instead, like ‘how to disable auto pagination’, ‘how to make money on your blog’, and ‘what TV series do you watch?’ I’m not kidding here! Where was the part telling me to ‘go here first and here second and here third, etc.?’ Where was the part that lied, instilling the false belief that ‘Blogging is easy and any moron can do it’?

I felt cheated. And worried. And a little bit afraid.

“No cupcaking out, Pearl!” I reminded myself and decided to re-read all the buttons. ‘Design’ seemed like a good place to start. Whoa! Did you know there are screens BEHIND the screens in blogland? I decided to start with the word ‘template’.

Maybe the word should’ve been ‘candy store’, because when I went to the screen behind the screen, I felt like I was in one! I was astonished to see hundreds of different blog designs, and even more surprised that every time you clicked on one of the pictures, it changed your blog to look like the one on the screen! Wow! I could change the colors to purple, pink, green, yellow, or any color of the rainbow. There was a template that was orange with pink swirls in the background and another that looked like clouds against a blue sky. I clicked on each picture to see how it would look on my blog. Wow! I liked the one with wide pink stripes and the one that looked like the outside of a hotel. Then I clicked on one with bright green grass, a bright blue sky and a few white dandelions. I’d looked and looked at that one.

I debated with myself: Was it too frivolous? Should I choose something more somber? Should I pick one ‘better suited to a woman my age’, or perhaps more appropriate for a woman who was still emotionally married to ‘he who will never boot up his computer again’?

I looked through all of the choices again. There was a black and gray one that was simple, but it made me sad. Right next to the green and blue one I liked the best, was a chocolate colored background with a little map on it. After I tried that one on my blog, I finally raised my head and looked around at the now darkened room. Glancing at the clock, I could not believe that the entire afternoon was gone! I was starving. My butt felt like it had grown roots into the chair. The blue and green one was it! I clicked on the little button that said “apply ” and the screen filled up with my new happy looking blog. I shut down my laptop and tried to stand up.

It was hard to balance with my butt all flat and numb; I felt like I might be permanently bent into an upside down letter ‘L’ shape. If you’d been peeking in my kitchen window at that exact moment, you’d have thought I was as crippled and hobbled on the outside, as I was on the inside. But I guess you wouldn’t have known about the crippled on the inside part, because even if you’d suspected it, I’d never ever have let you see how maimed and mangled my soul was. I still had my pride back then and I was still writing fiction inside my heart and trying to convince myself, along with the rest of the world, that I was doing just fine, thank you very much.

To be continued, Tuesday, November 3.

(c) 2010 Jennifer R. MatlockThis publication is the exclusive property of Jennifer R. Matlock and is protected under the US Copyright Act of 1976 and all other applicable international, federal, state and local laws. The contents of this post/story may not be reproduced as a whole or in part, by any means whatsoever, without consent of the author, Jennifer R. Matlock. All rights reserved.

Sunday, October 24, 2010

Since I’ve started writing “Sundays with Steve”, I’ve been thinking about vignettes of my life growing up in North Idaho. I realize the town where I grew up and the life I lived with my family is really a classic, all-American story. Perhaps you will recognize some of your childhood in these writings. And perhaps you will recognize the town you grew up in along with some of the characters you knew. Mrs. Steve has encouraged me to write these attempts of “creative writing” as opposed to the more factual journalistic style I was trained in and practiced in my early career many years ago. So my apologies if I stumble a bit here and there trying to blend the two styles together

SUMMER ON THE FARM

While I was learning to drive the big rigs on the farm, I was also learning how to ride a horse and herd cows.

A cowboy. Me, a spectacled high school kid who spent weekends covering sports for both the high school and the local daily newspaper. I was on the high school golf team, not the rodeo circuit, for crying out loud: A cowboy, me, geez, I didn’t think I would ever live it down.

That summer job on the Curtis farm, deep in the heart of the Palouse district just south of Spokane, Washington, had a lot of firsts for me. Experiences of new things discovered and tried, to be accepted into life or rejected. Driving big grain trucks turned out to be both hard work and enjoyable, and came in handy in years ahead. Herding cows on horseback on the other hand, while romanticized by the Western movies, wasn’t so much fun and was never repeated again in my life.

The Curtis farm, first and foremost, produced gain in the summer and peas in the spring. Wet winters and springs, and warm, dry summers were perfect for growing these crops. This was Palouse country, with 40 to 80-feet of rich black volcanic soil, just 100 miles downwind from the Cascade Range volcanoes.

I had never been on a farm in my life, at least never for more than about an hour. This was all new to me. When I heard that I was going to work with the grain harvest team as a driver, and do other chores before the harvest started in July, I said “Sign me up!” I didn’t know I was about to experience life as a cowboy. But wait, I thought, cowboy life couldn’t be all bad: The Long Ranger and Tonto, the Bonanza boys, Gunsmoke, and Will Rogers. Yes sirree, I was ready to be a cowboy!

Life as a cowboy was a bit of disappointment. Well ok, it sucked.

Cowboy life in the 1960’s was a lot more than herding cows.

The day started in the dingy, dirty bunk house that I shared with a college kid, the other “hired hand” prior to the harvest crew coming in. It was home for the summer. A shack, really, with a bathroom and shower carved out under the building.

After a big breakfast at the farm house, prepared by the lovely Mrs. Curtis each day, my cowboy day started by moving irrigation pipe. There was some pasture land down on the river bottom that was irrigated using sprinklers pumping water out of the Palouse River. These sprinklers were mounted on long pipelines, pipelines as long as the pasture was wide, that had to be moved once every 24 hours, all summer long. Moving those pipes, each section maybe 25 feet long, was this cowboy’s job on the farm.

I hated that job. I’d wear fishing waders to keep dry in the waist - high pasture grass or alfalfa that had just gotten a good 24 hour soak. I’d have to pick up those pipes and hold them over my head like bar bells, 25-foot long bar bells, then squish through the mud for maybe 150 feet to lay the line in a new location. The job would take three or four hours every day.

Ah, the life of a cowboy: That alfalfa I irrigated all summer was cut a couple of times using a tractor and mower. Formed and tied into bales, it was used to feed the cows all winter. Mowing and bundling was the easy part. The cowboy part was picking those bales off the ground and throwing them up onto the bed of a truck. Then tossing those 100 pound bales from the truck up into the loft of the barn. I built up muscles that summer I never knew I had. This was not a job for sissies!

Then Mr. Curtis, terrific guy that he was (he’s still alive today, living in Pullman, WA, and must be pushing 90 years old), decided that a part of my cowboy life was to be spent as a painter. I spent weeks – it felt like years -- painting fences, wooden boarded fences, at least two or three miles worth, painting sides, three boards tall, and all very white. There was and old barn I painted, too, red of course, standing on scaffolding 20 to 30 feet in the air. I didn’t mind the painting, I had KRJ Radio from Spokane playing 1960’s summer rock & roll to keep me company through those long, warm afternoons, it was the rickety scaffolding on that barn that I didn’t like, swaying in breeze.

Oh, yes, the cowboy part of the story: Curtis had a hundred cows or so on the farm, mostly in the pastures I was irrigating each day. We would move the cows from one pasture to the next, sometimes a couple of miles apart, riding horses and using a couple of the farm dogs to help herd those little doggies along. We would follow farm roads linking the pastures. It was actually kind of pleasant, once I figured out how to aim the horses and how to command the dogs. Nothing very exciting happened with those cows, they just kind of walked slowly up the road to the next pasture, with us cowboys bringing up the rear on the horses. And as long as nothing happened, if I just had to follow along, I did fine. When a cow strayed off and I had to be chased back to the herd by maneuvering the horse in front of it, cutting off its escape, well, let’s say it was a learning experience for me.

Do you know how stupid cows really are? Very. Do they following instructions or directions? No. Do they do anything more than sit in the grass and chew cud? No. Do they go their own way when you move them to the next pasture? Of course, I didn’t even need to be there for all the good I did. Do your hip joints hurt like the dickens after a few hours in the saddle? Yes. Was herding cows really a cowboy’s job? I guess it was, certainly a hell of a lot more fun than repairing barbed wire or bucking bales or painting miles of wood fence. Really, I decided, the cowboy life was not really my idea of a good career path.

Let me mention Mr. Curtis. Bob Curtis was well-known as the “Voice of the Vandals” in the region and through the state of Idaho as the radio broadcast voice for 47 years of University of Idaho football and basketball games. I had been listening to him, often with my father on Saturday afternoons, for years before I ended up on his farm. He had a booming voice that was backed up by a razor sharp mind. I was in awe of him, and I still admire him years later.

Below is Bob Curtis (right) along with my cousin Gene Hamblin (left), my father (middle) on their way to a football game in Houston. The Idaho football team lost, as I recall, by a score of about 77-0, maybe their biggest loss in history. Cousin Gene was the “color” man to Curtis for many years, and Dad was often in attendance too.

(you can click on this picture to make it easier to see)

Finally the grain harvest came to the farm in late July. I drove a gasoline powered grain truck (not the big diesel rig) that would come along side of the combine in the field. The combine driver would unload its wheat into the trunk bed and I would drive it then to a small elevator on the farm. Usually the combined operator would stop his giant John Deere combine to unload, but not always, sometimes the unloading operation was occur as both truck and combine were moving across the fields.

We harvested for weeks in that area, first the Curtis farm, then others nearby. From early morning until dark, the race was always on to get the wheat in while it was perfectly ripe. When the harvest was done in that area, we drove 60 miles north and harvested another group of farms. They were long days, warm days, the grain dust got into every crevice of your clothes, it itched your skin and your eyes, and that shower late in the day before a big farm diner was the most welcomed relief.

There were two items we were very careful about during the harvest: The exhaust systems of the grain trucks ran very hot, and catching tinder dry grain on fire was always a concern. We always kept the trucks onto the cut side of the combines and out of the tall grain.

Grain dust is very explosive particularly when compressed. Grain elevators were blowing up and burning down constantly in those years, through-out grain country. When the wheat is dumped out of trucks, it creates a thick dust that comes from the husk of the kernel. A cigarette, a spark, anything can set it off. That was another constant concern.

But I escape calamity that summer, there were no grain fires or exploding elevators while I was on the farm. The very good news about the harvest for me was that I was relieved of moving the hated irrigation pipe each morning as it was finally someone else’s turn to have all that fun.

For a high school kid’s first and only year on the farm, the harvest was the highlight. It was long, it was tiring, it was hot, it was dirty, and it was rewarding work. Playing cowboy on the farm, well, that wasn’t quite so much. Did a future career path for me include farming? Nope, I can say, it did not. Any regrets that it did not? Nope, I can say, not a one.

(c) 2010 Stephen J. MatlockThis publication is the exclusive property of Stephen J. Matlock and is protected under the US Copyright Act of 1976 and all other applicable international, federal, state and local laws. The contents of this post/story may not be reproduced as a whole or in part, by any means whatsoever, without consent of the author, Stephen J. Matlock. All rights reserved.

Saturday, October 23, 2010

STOP! If you didn't read the end SC's from last week, please take a moment to do so. Just work backwards until you find out where you left off. I feel really bad that the people at the end don't get read.

Thanks!

Now on to regular SC biz...In case you've forgotten...

This is a themed writing meme and a different challenge this week.

You can use UP to 100 words to tell your story. The prompt does not count for your 100 words AND it must be left intact in the body of your story. No illustrations are permitted. Your story can be fact or fiction, just keep it PG, please! I have to look at my Grandchildren with these eyes.

You have the entire week to link your work to the meme and you can link more than one story if you like.

Please display link button or just a hyper-link back to Saturday Centus. Be careful to link your SC URL to the Linky and not just link to your main blog.

I would suggest that since these are so short, if you can't think of a title just use your blog name as the title in the Linky.

Try to visit each one because there are some amazing writers participating in this meme. Since the links are so short they are also a fun and quick read.

Please e-mail me directly with ???'s or ask your question in a comment and I will do my best to get back to you as soon as possible.

Friday, October 22, 2010

OK. Please, please stop now. It was just a rhetorical question and you truly weren't supposed to start naming things.

BUT...

I have totally missed the boat on a HUGE business opportunity here and I'm pretty annoyed at myself at the moment. No, it's not chicken or dough sitting...

Really, it's not.

It's...a lemonade making company.

I'm serious.

Don't people buy a lot of bottled lemonade?

Hey! That was not a rhetorical question. You are supposed to answer to save me time googling.

Geez. Keep up here, please.

Even though you didn't answer the non-rhetorical question about bottled lemonade, I'm pretty sure people do drink a lot of bottled lemonade.

AND...

My life for the past few weeks has been loaded with Hallmark moments suitable for the adorable phrase, "When life hands you lemons, make lemonade."

So, I'm thinking...

Since life seems to be in the mood to inundate me with citrus fruit, I should totally take advantage of it and start a business.

Don't you think this is a great idea?

I know a lot of you are being inundated with 'lemonade making moments', too. We'll go in together with this thing.

Between all of us we should be able to supply the entire universe with lemonade three times a day!

AND...

Because I'm really swamped starting the lemonade making business, I must apologize yet again for being absent from your blogs and replying to e-mails. If you totally need to get in touch with me, (to tell me I won your $10,000 giveaway or something like that!) just put URGENT in the subject line of an e-mail!

OK. Off to fire up my industrial size juicer.

If I wasn't so worn out from 'lemonade making moments', I think I'd be a teensy bit more excited about a lemonade making business!

Sigh...

And on a subject I cannot segue into this post with any natural flow whatsoever... Momma Hen is having the worlds cutest Boo Banner Giveaway. Even though it greatly reduces my chances of winning (mwahahahahahaha!) click here to go visit her post. It is really a cute, cute banner for a clever school bake-sale. And she's mighty sweet as well...in a non lemon-y sort of way! (I did it! I segued! I love it when that happens!)

Thursday, October 21, 2010

Class. Just so everyone is totally clear to totally clarify the little hissy fit I put on the AT "E" post yesterday. I have since removed it.

Can you all just take a moment and read this. Start to finish? Please.

Here are the RULES for AT. Yea, yea, I know rules were made to be broken but I'm old. I'm tired. My foot hurts. My coffee is too strong. AND I'm having a bad hair day. So follow the rules or go away.

1. You must, at some point in your post, tie it to the current letter. Please read my Elephant post today as an example.

2. You must, at some point in your post, show a link-back to Alphabe-Thursday. This is not for my own pathetic attempt at fame (ha, that made me laugh). It is so others participating can easily manipulate the return to that weeks linky. You can put the little picture linky in there, or you can put a hyper link in there, but link back YOU MUST!

3. You must cross your heart and hope to try to visit and comment on ten other blogs for the week. If you are typing your post with a pencil in your teeth because you are a paraplegic you can visit nine.

If you haven't been doing this, just start now. No harm no foul. If you already did it this week, no harm no foul.

If you don't know HOW to do this, e-mail me your question. Leave me a comment with your question AND I'll try to help you.

I'm just being like Aretha here. OK?

I just want a little respect for the meme and for the people who link in good faith.

So...please sing along with this little ditty...

R - E- S - P - E - C - T

Just a little bit.Just a little bit.

Thanks!

PS. Oh, most of you AT'ers are soooo sweet. The ones of you that e-mailed me are never the problem.

I will leave you with this last little thought.

ummm...

Never mind.

I don't have a last little thought.

Be a rebel elsewhere. Just follow the meme rules and we will have happy-happy-joy-joy in Alphabe-Thursday land once again.

I know 'almost failed romance' doesn't start with the letter "E". But this really is my E post for Alphabe-Thursday and I will tell you why. Please take a deep breath at this point because you may feel briefly light-headed following this out-of-control train of thought.

...

So...

You know that the word ELEPHANT starts with the letter "E", right?

BUT...

Did you know, I almost had a failed romance because my husband had a giant ummm... ummm... elephant that he brought to the relationship.

Yea.

I was torn.

I was afraid of the darned thing, it was sooooo huge I totally wondered how I would ever manage it or where I could possibly put it.

But size is never supposed to matter in true love, so romance finally triumphed.

AND...

We got married...

And...

...with great dismay I hung the elephant over the unused fireplace in the living room.

This atrocious thing is over 4' tall. And when it falls on you it hurts. And, NosirreeBob, there has never, ever been a point in my life when I fantasized about a giant .... ummm.... elephant...

AND...

Huh?

WHAT?

What did you think I was talking about?!?

Of course, I was writing about a giant elephant right from the very beginning of this post.

Geez.

To see other non-size related posts from Alphabe-Thursday, just click here.

Wednesday, October 20, 2010

STOP! CLICK HERE AND READ THIS BEFORE YOU CONTINUE!Good morning class! I hope you all join with me this week in evaluating the letter: Please link directly to your Alphabe-Thursday URL (if you don't know how to do this let me know!) and please continue to visit the five links before and after your link and leave a comment. Minimum of 10 links visited please. You can visit more if you like, of course.

I also want to let you know that each week I visit every blog. If it appears I haven't visited your blog by Wednesday morning, please let me know, because it is important to me to make sure you know I've visited you! This will avoid you trying to skip out on doing your assignment as well.

If you have any difficulties with your link, please make sure to include the number of the link when you e-mail me. It is really difficult for me to find you easily otherwise.

If you have any questions about Alphabe-Thursday or problems doing your link just post it in a comment or send me an e-mail. I'll do my best to help you as quickly as I can.

The McLinkey will be live from 1:00 pm MST time Wednesday afternoon in an effort to assist our lovely "friends across the pond" and continue through 10:00 am MST time Friday morning!

And remember.... link back to this post, you need to be registered as a follower of my blog, PG posts only, and try to visit the 5 students before and after your post at minimum. The links will stay live after the final post deadline has passed so you can even wait and visit over the weekend or whenever you have more time.

Tuesday, October 19, 2010

If you missed where this story started just click here to read it or click on the Story-Time Tuesday link at the top of my blog to take you to previous chapters.

Writing Fiction - Chapter 7

Who knew that grocery shopping could be so exhausting? Or maybe right now it was just life in its entirety that was exhausting.

As I restocked the pantry, I realized I’d never liked grocery shopping. Why hadn’t I asked my husband to help with that chore? I’d just owned the unwanted task like it was a penance. I should’ve asked him. I should’ve told him I hated it. I think maybe I felt martyrdom was synonymous with motherhood. Now that I thought about it, though, perhaps I’d created that resentment almost single-handedly. Early in our marriage my husband had offered to vacuum and make dinner, but I’d always turned him down. Not only had I felt it was my ‘job’ within our marriage, I’d never believed he’d do it right. After awhile he’d quit offering and I’d just continued with the chores I’d never liked doing to begin with. Even when he had asked me, “What can I do to help?” I’d always reply, “Nothing. I’ve got it,” which really meant, “If I have to tell you what I need, don’t bother.” My Grandmother always called responses like that ‘cutting off your nose to spite your face”. I had always done a pretty fair job with the whole attempted nose amputation technique.

As I put cans into the pantry and washed the produce, my musings continued.

I recalled long ago trips to the grocery store with my two young children. I’d always been amazed at the brain-washing powers of Saturday morning commercials. How could two, reasonably well-mannered kids turn into psychotically greedy ‘me-me-me’s’ from watching manic, rainbow-colored rabbits peddle sugar-filled cereal? How did those ad agencies learn to brainwash people anyway? And why weren’t they using their skills for a higher power like, perhaps, developing commercials to ease grief? Why didn’t they create commercials that helped with abandonment and anger issues? I’d have been totally willing to buy grief-reduction cereal even if it weren’t being promoted by a manic, rainbow-colored rabbit.

Thinking about the kids made me sad. Thinking about how our son acted…I shook my head to clear it. I needed to finish putting those groceries away and get back to my plan. Going down another grief-filled detour via Memory Lane wouldn’t help me to get moving on the interstate out of Woe-ville.

And attempting to escape from Woe-Ville certainly had a tendency to make me hungry back then.

Before my husband had ‘gone to the great ghostly arches’ he’d always been a sandwich-for-lunch kind of guy. I thought I’d been a sandwich-for-lunch kind of girl, too, but standing in the kitchen that day, I realized I wasn’t any longer. Maybe I never had been. It’s funny, really, how you take on someone’s identity and preferences just because you love them. After making so many small decisions by default, you forget what you really liked to begin with.

I rummaged through my now restocked pantry to find the red and white drum of oatmeal. As the single-serving batch simmered on the stove, I finished putting everything away and dolled up my non-sandwich lunch. You know what? The lady with the big hair and the pronounced southern drawl had been right…butter and brown sugar really had made that oatmeal taste ‘out of this world, ya’ll.”

I’d amazed myself at what I’d gotten done that day so far, but there were still miles to go before I could sleep, so I sat down with the laptop and notepad again. I didn’t want to. I wanted to go visit my loud-mouthed electronic friend in the living room. What would an hour hurt? I decided I’d watch one measly show on TV and then get back to work. It felt a lot more comfortable to be in front of the TV than trying to use my brain. I just wanted to be lulled back into numbness; this whole blog mess was making me think way too much!

Just as I’d settled myself into the perfect Pearl-size indentations in the couch cushions, the phone rang.

Arrrgggh! Why does that happen? I decided to ignore it. It rang again. And a few moments later it rang again. I heaved myself off the couch and went to the kitchen to the answering machine. Before my husband had ‘lost his earthly dial tone’, he had been nagging me to get rid of the answering machine and put voice mail on our phone. I wished I would have let him. Then the little red flashing button wouldn’t be able to pester me every time I went into the kitchen to get some cookies…I mean, to get a drink of water.

I hit the button and that robotic, irritating voice smugly informed me, “You have three messages.” That pronouncement used to make me smile, now it just made me mad. Calling people back really cut into my ‘oh poor me’ time.

Message number one. “We are offering a special carpet cleaning package in your area and…” Message deleted.

Message number two. “Pearl? Hi Pearl. Pick up. I was hoping you’d be home. I wanted to stop by and check on you and…” Message deleted.

Message number three. “Mom? Mom, are you there? It’s Jessie. I wanted to see how the blog was coming. Is it ready? I’m really excited for you.” Message cursed. Darn! I thought I had at least two more days before that call came in.

But knowing my daughter, I couldn’t ignore the message or she’d just persist and eventually threaten to come check on me, so I quickly called her back.

“Mom! I’m so glad you called! How’s the blog? Is it ready? Were you busy when I called a little bit ago?”

First of all, how did she do this? How did she know it was me right away when I called her number? She’d told me it was something on her phone that let her see who was calling before she answered it. I’d like something like that. It sounded like a handy way to avoid people. I made a note to call the phone company to check it out. Avoiding people more easily was something that really appealled to me at that moment in time.

I started talking in that really fast way that doesn’t allow the other person to ask any questions. My husband used to call it blathering, but I’d always preferred to think of it as conflict avoidance. I told Jessie I had a blog name and I was going to call my blog ‘Life inside an Oyster’. She didn’t say anything for a moment. Then she said, “Weee-eeellll, that’s an interesting blog name. How did you come up with it?” So I explained how a pearl is really something beautiful, formed inside an oyster as a result of an irritant and how the nacre forms around it. She interrupted me to ask, “Well, doesn’t that make YOU the irritant then?”

I paused for a moment to think that through. Irritant inside an oyster…hmmm… You know what? She was right. My blog name meant that I WAS THE IRRITANT! How did that happen? I pretended I’d done it on purpose. “Yes it does, but what’s really important here is that my blog is the 47,396,001st one on the internet.” Again with the pause. “Ummm…Okay, Mom. How do you know that?” And I explained in great detail, using my copious notes that there were presently 47,396,000 blogs and that, of course, “Life Inside an Oyster” added one to that number. Trying to impress her further, I started quoting all kinds of confusing numbers and she finally interrupted me to say, “OK, Mom. I get it. You really are starting a blog. I have to confess I thought you were lying to me.”

I sniffed several times to show her how ludicrous that statement was. “Lying to you? Jessie, you know me better than that,” and I swear I heard her say under her breath, “Yeah, I do.”

We chatted a little bit more about how work was going and how she hadn’t talked to her brother, and finally I had to interrupt her. “Jessie, I need to go work on my blog layout, so I really have to hang up now. Love you!”

Her return “Love you!” felt like a hug. Being hugged by a daughter is comfort enough for one afternoon, so I decided the TV could wait and I’d actually work on my blog layout, even though I wasn’t totally sure exactly what that meant. I’d read a whole bunch of other bloggers saying they were working on theirs so I figured it would be a safe bet to tell my daughter I was going to work on mine.

It took me a moment to remember where I was in the blogging process, but reviewing my notes brought my progress, or lack thereof, back to me quickly. So far, I’d figured out where to buy a blog and how much it would cost. And I’d chosen a nonsensical blog name. That was a pretty good start, so I decided to take a quick moment and call the phone company to ask about the whole voice mail and caller ID thing.

It turned out to not be a quick moment. It turned into a whole bunch of pushing buttons and hanging up on myself several times before I finally got to talk to a real person. I remember thinking, “Why can’t you just dial the phone number and talk to a person? Why do I have to push 1 and then the pound sign (it’s down at the bottom right of your phone if you have trouble finding it, too) followed by my 32 digit account number? Then you have to “Say or press one” to move onto the next step. I’d never known things like this were so complicated. I’d never known how much my husband had actually done when he’d handled all these things. My anger flared up again briefly as I felt the abandonment emotion well up inside me. He’d really left me unprepared, he had really…

Can I be honest here? He’d actually asked me, and more than once, to let him show me about the bills and the utilities. I’d just blown him off. At the time, I’d been annoyed that the perpetual repetition of buy food, make food, clean up food, buy toilet paper routine never varied. I’d been feeling overwhelmed, under-appreciated, over-worked, and under-acknowledged and I was certainly not feeling open to being shown more things to do around the house.

I recalled wondering for a moment or two whether my husband had known anything about blogs. He’d always been really good at things like that. I suspected if he’d still been here, he’d have been able to help me make a blog easily. But then, to be honest, I guessed if he’d still been here I wouldn’t even be thinking of starting a blog.

I went to the site with the free blogs and typed in ‘mylifeinsideanoyster’ and suddenly a screen popped up. There was my blog name...and two little boxes instructing me to sign in.

To be continued, Tuesday, October 26.

(c) 2010 Jennifer R. MatlockThis publication is the exclusive property of Jennifer R. Matlock and is protected under the US Copyright Act of 1976 and all other applicable international, federal, state and local laws. The contents of this post/story may not be reproduced as a whole or in part, by any means whatsoever, without consent of the author, Jennifer R. Matlock. All rights reserved.

Monday, October 18, 2010

In the wee hours of Sunday morning instead of waking Mr. Jenny to have a conversation, I reached in the darkness of our bedroom for a notepad and pencil on my nightstand and quickly wrote a whole bunch of brilliant, philosophical stuff about the philosophy of loss.

I tell ya. Socrates had nothing on what I came up with.

AND...

Ummm...yea...

When I actually woke up this morning and read my notes, I couldn't read a single thing I had written.

It was wonderful, though. I'm certain of that. Totally confident that it was amazing.

You would have been deeply impressed with my insight into this subject.

But alas...

After I tried without success to read my scrawls for several long moments, I feared I would have nothing of substance to post about on Monday morning...

BUT...

Then I went to the bathroom to get a drink of cold water.

And...

I realized I DID have something important to tell you about after all.

Thank heavens.

That was a close one.

So...

You know how in the morning you get a drink of water and it's all cold and you haven't drank anything since the night before...

AND...

You can feel the water going all the way down that pipe thing (what the heck is that called anyway?) that connects your mouth to your stomach...

Sunday, October 17, 2010

Since I’ve started writing “Sundays with Steve”, I’ve been thinking about vignettes of my life growing up in North Idaho. I realize the town where I grew up and the life I lived with my family is really a classic, all-American story. Perhaps you will recognize some of your childhood in these writings. And perhaps you will recognize the town you grew up in along with some of the characters you knew. Mrs. Steve has encouraged me to write these attempts of “creative writing” as opposed to the more factual journalistic style I was trained in and practiced in my early career many years ago. So my apologies if I stumble a bit here and there trying to blend the two styles together

The Big Rig

It was a hot June day on the Palouse, the wheat fields green from the spring rains, and the first hints of gold were starting to show through the ripening grain.

“Just get in that truck and drive it,” said the farmer, “it won’t bite you.” Well, maybe it would, I thought. I’d just turned 17 the month before, I would be a senior in high school that fall, and that truck was a 44-foot long diesel big-rig, a “semi” built to haul tons of grain from the farm elevators to regional storage facilities some miles away.

I drove a Volkswagen at the time, thank you, not a 44 foot long behemoth. My VW would fit in its front seat. On the farm that summer I drove a 1950s piece- of- junk- pick- up truck from field to field to do my work. That pick-up would fit in the front half of the bed of that big grain truck.

“It’s no problem, just release the parking break, give it a little gas, and go,” said Mr. Curtis, grain farmer, on his spread just north of Colfax, Washington, in the heart of the Palouse district.

Did I mention that the giant truck was parked on a hill? Pointing up the hill? So if I screwed up the break release and clutch release the truck would roll backwards, over a cliff, and plunge to the Palouse River 100- feet below?

Did I tell you that truck had something like 10 forward and 4 reverse gears, compared to my Volkswagen’s three? And my piece-of-junk-pick-up-truck's three speeds on the column? Gulp. The thing had air breaks, whatever those really might be, they make a lot of noise and I really hoped they really would stop that monster.

I climbed up into the cab. I could have used a ladder, it would have been easier. I was sweating, hard, not from the heat but from my nerves. The engine was running at an idle. I pushed in the clutch with my left foot. It was not a standard clutch pedal that you would or should find in cars or tiny pick-ups trucks, but a clutch pedal that was bigger than my work boot. I pushed it to the floor. I opened the throttle with the gas pedal, giving it enough gas to make that big diesel roar. And it did.

“Easy, easy,” said Mr. Curtis, a long-time hero of mine, “you don’t need to over-rev the engine; it will pull the load just fine.” I hunted for 2nd gear on the complicated shifter, found it, and slipped it into the slot. I gently released the parking brake and tried to engage the clutch at the same time keeping the gas steady. The truck jumped forward an inch or two; the front-end felt like it might have jumped off the group a little bit. It scared me. I slammed the break down and released the clutch. The engine stopped roaring and the truck jerked to a stop.

Ok, I told myself, let’s do this again, but smoothly this time. It can’t be this hard, can it? My pulse was racing faster than the trunk engine. I was sweating like two stuck pigs, two sweating pigs combined. I tried it again. I gave it some gas; I slowly engaged the clutch while releasing the parking brake. The truck jumped again, but instead of stopping, I gave it more gas and held the clutch at the engage point. The 20-ton truck jerked forward, and then jerked again. I’m up to 3 mph now. Mr Curtis is on the running board outside the driver’s side door, talking me through this lesson in driving the “big rigs”.

“Shift it, shift it!” urged Mr. Curtis, “Put it into 3rd and you are doing fine.” I crept up the hill. I shifted it into 3rd gear, and when I hit about 8 mph, I shifted it into 4th gear, smoothly letting out the clutch this time. “Ok,” said Bob Curtis, the Mr. Curtis title slipping away along with the panic of the moment, “I’ll pick you up in Colfax in about an hour.”

The truck was topping the hill, and started down the slightly sloping other side. I shifted into 5th gear. It held the monster at about 20 mph on that dirt road. That speed was just fine by me. The drive was starting to be fun, in a highly nervous sort of way. Up ahead was the first stop, a sign halting the few cars or trucks on that road where it intersected with a paved county road.

I saw the cows and sheep in a pasture off to the left, and I remembered chasing those damned sheep when they escaped through an open gate a few weeks earlier, chasing them down this very road, finally getting in front of them by crossing a field, then turning them around and herding them back to the pasture. Farm life, I wasn’t so sure it was the life for me.

I’d never stepped on an air brake before, it was activated by a floor peddle that was also bigger than my work boot. But the brake slowed that truck down just nicely, smoothly, and I released the clutch to bring the big rig to a stop. But here I was again, at a standstill, needing to put that truck into gear and pull it out on the paved road. I shifted it into 2nd gear to start the truck, and slowly gave it gas while releasing the clutch. The truck jumped and jerked, then smoothed out as I turned left onto the two lane road, shifting into 3rd to give it a little more speed, then 4th, then 5th. Success! It wasn’t that hard, was it? I was sweating less then, more from the heat than the nerves that had been slowly calmed.

A few miles later I came to the intersection with the main state highway in the region, a fast and busy route coming out of Spokane and pointing south to Colfax and Pullman. I eased the truck to the stop sign and watched ten cars speed by from both directions. This is going to be challenging, I thought, I hope I don’t kill someone, particularly me. I was sweating heavily again, but not from the heat.

I was getting better at this clutch/gasoline/shift/20 ton truck combo business. I saw a break in the traffic and moved the truck slowly across the highway and turned left for the 17- mile run into Colfax. I kept the truck to the right side, knowing that I was not going to drive this monster as fast as the auto traffic that was starting to build up behind me. I shifted through the gears, and found most of them in the process. Most, but not all -- some of those gears just weren’t there. I got the truck up to about 50 mph and kept it there.

There is a long hill on the north side of the town of Colfax. Colfax is a fairly pleasant farm town, nestled alongside the Palouse River with maybe 6,000 or 7,000 residents. My father was raised in this town by an aunt and uncle. He left after high school, never to return. The aunt and uncle died years ago.

Mr. Curtis (it was not Bob now, it was back to Mister) didn’t tell me anything about navigating the big rig down a long grade. Well, maybe it wasn’t that long, just a mile or two. And, well, maybe it wasn’t as steep as I thought it was. It isn’t today, after that highway was rebuilt in the 1970s. Back then, on my maiden flight of the monster truck, that grade must have been ten miles long with a 20-degree slope. At least I thought so. Maybe I could have gone a bit faster than 10 mph down the grade. And maybe I should have let those 20 cars stacked up behind me, pass. OK, Mister Chicken, this isn’t that bad or dangerous, I said to myself. I shifted again, letting the truck build up some speed. As it went a bit faster, I got more confidence. I up-shifted again. It went a bit faster. It wasn’t a speeding bullet, but it was enough. I was just whizzing right along at maybe 30 mph by then, my left turn off the highway was coming up and that truck was picking up more speed, almost barreling down that incline.

I was hoping those air brakes really worked! I was driving the truck into the shop in town for maintenance before the harvest season started in a few weeks, including work on the brake system. Ah, wait, there was good news -- the air brakes worked again on this dangerously steep hill, and slowed the mighty truck down. I did a smart, but slow, left turn across traffic and into the drive way of the diesel repair shop. I stopped the truck and sat there, re-gaining my breath, letting my sweat cool my still nervous body, letting my heart rate return to sort-of normal.

“You did fine, son,” said Mr. Curtis when he drove up a while later, “You are going to get a lot of experience with this truck this summer, I hoped you enjoyed the drive!”

I’m not sure how I felt about that forecast after my first drive of the big rigs, but boy, did I find out later. We’ll talk about that in the next Sunday story.

(c) 2010 Stephen J. MatlockThis publication is the exclusive property of Stephen J. Matlock and is protected under the US Copyright Act of 1976 and all other applicable international, federal, state and local laws. The contents of this post/story may not be reproduced as a whole or in part, by any means whatsoever, without consent of the author, Stephen J. Matlock. All rights reserved.